carolinacaniac

I am surprised to see Chick-Fil-A in California, I thought it was still mostly in the Eastern U.S. The portable drop rides provide an awesome experience, even the 50 or so foot one they had at the Pitt County Fair here in Greenville last year was a blast.

While I would love to see either a prowler-like GCI or an Intamin Woodie, I have a hard time seeing them adding a wood coaster since they already have four. But then again, they did have four launching coasters for two years.

^I'm glad to hear that many people down there are being able to resume their normal lives. Sounds like it is possible that the Houston Area will recover pretty quickly. I want to apologize if it sounded like I was trying to suggest that there was anything wrong with businesses getting things back together. That wasn't my intent. I just feel that people and their homes should be priority number one, as it is a basic need. I will agree though that sometimes it can get really bothersome when you "make do" for a while.

True, I have to give you that one as it was nice to be able to have a nice resturant meal once the water was deemed safe to use in food and beverages after Hurricane Floyd. At the same time, however, I think it was easier to enjoy that meal since we didn't have the same problems with damage to our home as others did. I cannot and would not blame anyone who owns a resturant, shop, or other form of business for trying to get it up and going again as it is their source of income, but for me personally, I would have a hard time enjoying a nice resturant meal, or enjoy a movie if I knew my home was destroyed, but then again, it might provide a lot more comfort for others than it would for me.

Well, I will be in Michigan for my Brother-in-law's high school graduation on the same weekend as my B-day (June 6th), so unless there is a park owned by Disney that randomly sprouts out of the ground that weekend........

Very much agreed. Worrying about fixing up the businesses first seems like a bit of a waste of time since you would still have people who are much more concerned about getting re-established than supporting the businesses. Once the community is set, then the people would more likely be ready to resume their normal lives, which includes the elective choices like shopping, entertainment, and other such things.

I am sure that they will find a way to balance it all out. If it was really going to add so much weight to the train that problems with them or the track would occur due to stress, they probably wouldn't even think about doing it. Besides, they took the extreamly heavy X trains, and made them lighter, and they even added the audio equipment. Granted there was a lot of room for improvement on the weight of the X trains, I would assume they have been figuring out a way to make the added weight have as little an impact as possible.

The first thought that came to mind when I saw the shark was Strange Wildernes....... "Uuuuuuuuuuuuuu, hu hu hu hu hu hu hu..........Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu hu hu hu hu hu hu hu.............Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu hu hu hu hu hu hu..............UUUUUUUUUUUUU HU HU HU HU HU!!!!!" Made me chuckle everytime I saw that stupid shark in the commercial. Nice pics of a smaller local place! I find that the Python Pit coasters can be just a silly fun ride.

If you mean the park in Federal Way, Washington, I did a Photo TR last summer, the link to the thread for it is here: Gary's Washington PTR It is in the third set of pictures I posted to the thread. I also have a few pictures from the Seattle Fun Forest in the second post I completed. I don't have the actually pictures from our hard drive available at the moment since I am at university computer lab, but if you guys can use them for the Wild Waves/Enchanted Village page, please do! I am always happy for TPR to use pictures I post here on the website! -Gary T.

^Very true, hadn't thought about that. Although I wonder if anyone may have just moved on because they were not able reach a settlement with their claims. Either way, the good news is that we have not had such a bad case of flooding since then. Even Tropical Storm Hannah from a week ago or so did little in the ways of flooding. It was more blown down leaves and broken branches than anything.

The place looks like it took a real beating. Sure they will probably rebuild, but like others have said, insurance claims take FOREVER!!!!! I wouldn't be surprised if some homes here in Greenville are still no yet repaired from the flooding of Hurricane Floyd, and that was back in 1999.

I think some of the stands have bottled beer. Somewhere in th $5.99-7.99 range each.

I think it would be kind of cool to go up the lift hill as the horns that play the intro to the movie theme were playing, with the tempo and main song starting with the first drop.

I give all parks in the world 4 more years, since the world is going to end in 2012!

You think this thing will allow for special orders? I usually like my bacon cheeseburgers with only bacon, cheese and ketchup.

I don't see how it would be a monopoly as there are other companies in the U.S. that produce beer. That and it was stated in a coupld different articles that In Bev doesn't really have a footing in the U.S. It isn't like all of the brewing companies are merging and being sold to them.

I don't know that IOA had that many advanced rides. Other than Spiderman and Incredible Hulk's Launching System, most of the other rides had something like it built at another park before. There could be others that I am not recalling off the top of my head though. I don't think that Maximum RPM was a "terrible" idea, but one that perhaps could have been held off until the park became more established (if it ever does).

I would not get rid of the fast-pass/flash pass/q-bot systems as a whole, but get rid of the "through the exit and right on" aspect. I think any ride that has a system like this should be set up with a merging point right before the station, that way people can pick what row they would like and the capacity issue would be helped a bit since you wouldn't have designated rows for people with the pass.

Somewhere I saw that they said this was going to be the second tallest in the park at 125 ft., but what coaster is taller? I was under the Impression that there were only two other 100+ ft tall coasters (Afterburn @ 113 ft and Nighthawk 115 ft).

I am intrigued by the idea of new trains, but the name is definatly not very creative. There used to be an Arena Football team that played in Raleigh and Charlotte called the Carolina Cobras. They moved to Charlotte because they had trouble drawing fans in Raleigh because of the increasing popularity of the Hurricanes, and after a few year in Charlotte, the team ended up folding.

The Midnight Rider name could have had more possibilities with the cool country section, kind of like you said Chuck, with a ghost town theme

While I agree the non-existant theming is lack luster for Eagles at HRP, I am not really sure what they could add to it to theme it to that level while keeping the Eagles connection. If they changed the name, the possibilities are probably much greater.

Based on the latest projections, Hannah will be about even, if not past my part of NC in the morning on Saturday. It may just end up being a really wet day. Either way, I am looking forward to seeing what the Big Mike Roadshow is all about! -Gary "Last time classes were cancelled here at ECU because of a hurricane, I went to see the Transporter 2 at theaters" T.

coaster05 had said earlier: Experience, in my opinion the most overrated thing in the election............. Last I checked I don't really think there is a job that gives you "experience" on being the most powerful person on the planet. I could not agree more. I said more or less the same thing when people were using the whole "experience" reason for supporting Hillary in the primaries. I also agree that it is unfair to pick on Governor Palin's daughter for her pregnancy as it is an issue that faces many teenagers across the nation, but this particular teenager's mother is trying to help win an election to become the understudy to the most powerful position in our nation. It is one thing to be Idealistic, and another to be Realistic. In an ideal world, people would abstain and wait until marriage, but in the real world, there are many people who do not wait, and because many of the people who live by these ideal beliefs believe that only speaking of them will be enough to keep their kids from getting pregnant. As we see in many cases though, it could have been prevented by telling them of safe-sex options. I had a teacher who told us about a time she taught sex-ed in Wilson County, NC. In Wilson County, it is local law that you can ONLY teach abstinence, and could not speak of safe-sex options. That is fine and dandy, except for the fact that three of the girls in the class were already pregnant I believe it was natatomic who said that we do not know what exactly happened in the Palin family in regards to her pregnant daughter, which is absolutely true. We can't say what exactly happened. I will say though that if she is as abstinence-oriented as others have eluded to, I kind of have to believe that she was probably trying to tell her kids of abstinence only. If she was telling the about safe-sex options, then I applaud her for that, but then she wold be pulling a double standard since she would be telling her daughter "go for it" while telling others to keep their pants on. One other thing, if you believe Obama only reads from a telepromter, you might have not been to a speech of his. At his speech in Greenville when Melissa and I went to see him, it was just a him, a stage and a microphone. That's not to say he doesn't use one at all, as many great great speakers use them for help, but what I am saying is that he is an excellent speaker, even when the telepromters are not around. -Gary T.

I don't think they really have to worry about the winter, as it doesn't last very long here in the south compared to the northern states. Nothing wrong with geatting a head start though so they can try to have it open with the park for the begining of the season next year.